BlizzCon 2016 World of Warcraft: What’s Next Panel Transcript

Patch 7.2 Dungeon Updates & Patch 7.3 Argus

Hazzikostas: Dungeons. I have mentioned a dungeon coming in 7.2, we are incredibly happy with how certain dungeon gameplay has been to Legion so far. With the Legion raid dungeon content that we had, and the keystone dungeon system that really provides an alternate power level progression to gearing if you are in a smaller group that is not necessarily up for raiding, but wants challenging content. So we want to keep building upon that.

We are doing a few things on that front in 7.2. First off, we want to make sure that dungeons stay relevant. When we move on, and we had Nighthold gear and 7.2 is coming out, what is the point of running a Heroic dungeon? What’s the point of running even a regular Mythic dungeon that drops 840 gear, if we are all in better stuff than that?

So when 7.2 comes out, we are actually going to increase across the board the difficulty of Heroic and Mythic dungeons, as well as their rewards across the board. We are going to basically introduce the Tomb of Sargeras dungeon in Heroic and Mythic, and now we will have the tuning and rewards that make sense for a dungeon in that place, and then everything else is going to be moved up right alongside it, so that all stays relevant as opposed to probably how we’ve often tuned them in the past where in for example Patch 4.1 the troll dungeon (Rise of the Zandalari) came out and you didn’t have any reason to run the original dungeons.

But that also of course means is that the whole Mythic keystone system also gets re-normalized and bumped up on top of that. So rather than being irrelevant, the Mythic 3 or Mythic 4 will go back to being challenging and relevant for the intended audience alongside the Tomb of Sargeras raid in 7.2.

Karazhan! Now… initially, we felt like: “Man, 9 bosses or 8 bosses,” depending how you are viewing it in Karazhan, “that’s really though to have in one dungeon experience without a weekly lockout.”

In 7.2, we are going to break this up into an upper and lower section. it will be available as a 4 boss Mythic keystone run, but it will also be queue-able to run on Heroics. Also, at the same time, we are going to add queue-able Heroic versions of Court of Stars and Arcway. So that if you are the Heroic dungeon player, if you are not someone who jumps into matchmake or to organized non-matchmake Mythic dungeons, you basically have 5 new dungeons coming your way for your playstyle in Patch 7.2.

Oh yea, speaking of Mythic keystones, one of the great things about this is that it is an expandable system. We can keep adding new variables, new ways of interacting with the system. So expect some new affixes coming your way. For those of you in the crowd who are some hardcore progression players, if you have done Mythic: Il’gynoth and you know how the bloods work– imagine if every mob in the dungeon wore Ill’gynoth blood. Just imagine. It’s great! What? Why don’t you guys think it’s great? I don’t… meh, I give up.

When is this coming? Actually Soon™, sorry! But… right after PTR 7.1.5 is done, again I apologize to those who hate content but get used to there often almost always being something on the PTR. The second something comes down, we will have another new thing back up because the content train marches on, and that is how it goes.

So 7.1, 7.1.5, 7.2, and of course, there will be a 7.2.5 after that… so yea, I mean, at the end of 7.2 we would have delved into the depths of the Tomb of Sargeras. We would have vanquished the Avatar of Sargeras again. We would have stopped Kil’jaeden himself. We would have used the Pillars of Creation to seal off the Legion invasion to Azeroth.

Feels a lot like that’s where the story should come at an end. I mean, in a lot of ways Icecrown Citadel is kinda like the Tomb of Sargeras of Wrath of the Lich King, and that’s where that ended.

So… where else should we go after this? Well, if you have been listening to Illidan, if you have listened to Illidan about the nature of the Legion, you know that they are likely to be back. We may win a brief respite. We may save ourselves for a day or two. Free for a year or two. But what will come after that? They would just be back for more. Where else could we go in our search for the end of the Legion? if we want to stop the Legion, if we want to truly win peace for Azeroth, we are going to need to look beyond the land around us. Beyond the Broken Isles. Beyond Azeroth itself. To the skies. We are going to need to go to ARGUS.

Now we are going to have a whole lot to talk about when it comes to this in the future, but there is almost nothing that I can say that would not be a tremendous spoiler, right now. But suffice it to say, this story and our journey is far from over. We have an epic tale, and epic story, and an epic amount of content prepared — coming your way.

Thank you so much for joining us for the ride. Hang on tight, because it is going to be a great one.

Tomas Hernandez is owner of Blizzplanet.com since 2003. I post news about World of Warcraft, StarCraft II, Diablo III, Hearthstone, Overwatch, Heroes of the Storm, Blizzard Careers, and the Warcraft film.

Blizzplanet is a leading fansite covering news about upcoming Blizzard Entertainment licensed products. I also post previews and reviews. I have interviewed book writers and Blizzard game developers.

I was previously an employee of the OGaming Network (2003), and IncGamers (2008-2010). I was a guest newsposter for GosuGamers (World of Warcraft) a few years ago and for Diablofans.com (formerly Diablo3.com)

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